Dear Lisa:

There is much controversy about Theophostic Prayer and Counseling. It was invented by a Southern Baptist Ed Smith. While this is not a problem in-and-of-itself, we must be careful to ensure the counseling techniques we use are thoroughly Catholic. The Church teaches that truth can be found in many places and when we find a truth we, as Catholics, can join in. I use some ideas from Protestants in my own counseling, but I vet these ideas and edit or modify them to ensure 100% Catholic worldview.

Aside from that general advice about borrowing from Protestant sources, Theophostic Prayer seems to have from very definite problems that would cause me to not recommend it.

A woman named Jane, posting the the Coming Home Network Discussion Board (Coming Home Network is an organization helping Protestant clergy in their conversion to Catholicism) gives this well written short evaluation based upon her personal experiences with Theophostic Prayer Counseling:

Re: Theophostic Prayer « Reply #16 on: July 14, 2009, 11:21:03 pm »

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When I was in training for Christian counseling as a non-denominational Protestant, one of the prerequisites was to take a Basic Theophostic Training course.  I read the huge manual by Ed M. Smith, who came up with the method and the name for theophostics.  After reading the book, I had deep reservations about using the method.

The method uses "guided imagery" which is most frequently used in New Age and Yoga settings, but which some Christians have used in recent years.  The U.S. Catholic Bishops have written a paper warning of the dangers of guided imagery and other passive techniques.  Guided imagery is the process by which a person suspends his personal thinking and visualizing and allows himself to follow the thoughts and visual images spoken out loud by another person.  It is a mind-emptying technique, and promotes passivity on the part of the person being guided.  Whenever the mind is passive or empty, we are no longer taking every thought captive unto Christ.  We are no longer turning away from certain thoughts and turning our minds toward high and noble thoughts, as St. Paul admonished us to do. In addition, we offer the wrong spirits easy access.

Ed M. Smith tells those who come to him for help to NOT use their minds to remember, but only to feel and listen.  He advocates a passive mind, even as he warns about the dangers of guided imagery techniques.

Another aspect of theophostics that I found troubling was the technique that Smith calls "stirring up the darkness."  Using guided imagery, he leads a person back to a memory and keeps them there with questions and suggestions to intensify the pain, shame and sense of helplessness.  When the person is re-living the memory, it is at this point that Smith asks the person to look at the memory and see where Jesus is located in the memory and to describe what Jesus is doing and saying.

It is when the mind of the person being ministered to is most passive -- when he or she is FEELING most intensely and LISTENING most closely to Ed's voice -- that the suggestion is made to find Jesus in the memory.  Ed claims to know the difference between the real Jesus and a counterfeit.  Yet in the book he offers so many examples of counterfeits that he has encountered that I should think that alone would warn him away from practicing this occult process.

The phrase "stirring up the darkness" that Ed Smith uses throughout his book and in the counseling sessions sounds to me very much like a belief held by Gnostic heretics.  Gnostics believe that to overturn evil, a person must first enter into evil and experience it at a deep level.  In my opinion, having come out of the heresy of Gnosticism myself (by God's grace), I believe Ed Smith crosses over into heresy with his belief and practice of "stirring up the darkness."  Theophostics has the person enter into and relive the evil experience before they are delivered out of it.

Another error of Gnosticism is the belief that Christianity is not enough.  To become a true believer, one could use Christian beliefs, but one needed to also know the secret knowledge only offered by Gnostics.  This is an error that Ed Smith falls into as well.  He states that the Christian Scriptures "don't do a whole lot of good" and that a person needs his book on theophostics as well as the Bible in order to be set free from the lies of the devil.  Further, he implies that the Bible will only become helpful to a person if the person first goes through theophostics.

I have grave reservations about theophostics.  For a person who is stable, sane, and confident in Christ, it probably won't hurt.  For a person who is troubled mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, it has the potential to derail that person from following Christ.

After studying Theophostics for myself, I left the training for Christian counseling, certain that practicing the technique in a counseling setting could harm others.

That's my personal experience with theophostics.

There is also an evaluation report from the Christian Research Institute (a Protestant cult watch group).

Given the problems outlined by these sources, I think I must not recommend Theophostic Prayer Counseling. Instead, we can use Nouthetic Counseling based upon the Bible and Church teaching and the Saints, and, when needed, sessions dealing with a proper healing of memories.

Our own counseling philosophy combines several modalities, but all vetted through the glasses of a Catholic worldview, official teachings, and wisdom of the Saints.

For a outline of the counseling approach we use, see our Basic Counseling Theory.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary